I just got the proof of the cover of my book Everything Changes: Living With Cancer in Your 20’s and 30’s and the background is robins egg blue. I love it. The foreground has three Polaroid snapshots that appear like they are taped to the cover. It got me thinking, if it weren’t the graphic designers but rather me who got to perfectly sum up my cancer career in three Polaroid shots, what would they be?
1. Me perched next to my stack of medical and insurance files that is nearing waist high.
2. The sponge bath that my friend gave me the first time that I could have human contact after the radioactive contamination effects of my treatment had diminished. That is a good friend! (She has since become a Buddhist chaplain. Rock on Loren.)
3. Me, riddled with anxiety, sitting on the couch next to a guy on date number two when I confessed that I have cancer. Unlike the other kagillion dates before this one, it went very well - he is now my husband.
What pics would you choose from your cancer career?
“Everything Changes is, without doubt, the most forthright, emotionally sophisticated, and plain-old valuable book of its kind I've seen.”
July 10th, 2008 at 9:39 AM
what a great question….
i think i’d have to choose these three:
1. a pic of my cute little mom wiping my sad chemo ass during treatment because i didn’t have the strength/coordination to do it myself. poop brings people together. that’s love!: )
2. a pic of me on a blind date after treatment (BIG MISTAKE!) i wore a beret to cover my
fuzzy baby seal hair and a poncho to ‘hide’ my central line hanging outta my chest like udders.
i was desperate to feel ‘normal’ and ‘feminine’ again. operative word…desperate.
3. a pic of post-treatment, when i finally understood a glimpse of maybe why this happened to me so young. it’s a pic of me and dan walking down the aisle. if i never would have been diagnosed, i never would have met my
husband, my best friend and love of my life. it was beyond hell, but for a lifetime with him, it was worth it.
i can’t wait for the book to come out. what a labor of love and a long time coming, for sure!
July 10th, 2008 at 1:07 PM
k, what happened to the old, catchy title for your book?
July 10th, 2008 at 2:05 PM
Marketing departments at publishing houses are what happened to the old catchy title of my book. I was feeling sad for the loss until reading a Deborah Solomon interview with Jim Webb describing that the same happened to his book title. Dems is da breaks!